Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Welcome to the Clear Impact podcast, brought to you by PGTI University. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Sherri Connor, and I am your host.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: So good afternoon. We are here on the Clear Impact podcast, and we are recording at Anlin windows and doors today. And so we are in Clovis, California, and this team is just amazing. They roped all kinds of people into coming in and chatting with me today. And so, across table from me right now is Sergio Gutierrez.
[00:00:36] Speaker C: Okay, you say it. Gutierrez.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Gutierrez.
[00:00:39] Speaker C: Roll that R. Gutierre.
Guterres. Or you can say Guterres.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: Guterres.
[00:00:44] Speaker C: That's fine.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Guterres.
[00:00:45] Speaker C: Guterres.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Senior Sergio.
[00:00:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: So, Sergio, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:49] Speaker C: Well, thank you. Thank you for having me here. And you guys, welcome to Clovis and Allen.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: And so tell us a little bit about you, like, a little bit about your career and how long you've been here and what you do, and just give us some background.
[00:01:01] Speaker C: Well, sure, no problem. So my path is a little different. I never thought I was going to be working at Amlin.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: No.
[00:01:07] Speaker C: Even though we had family members that worked here for years, I was in the financial services business, and when the market went down, profits and just everything kind of just went downhill a little bit.
[00:01:18] Speaker D: Right.
[00:01:18] Speaker C: So I had to start looking for a different career. Got to the point where I had a brother in law that worked here, and he said, hey, man, you want to come in here? They're taking temps right now. And I had three kids to raise, so I had no pride. I had to come here to work. And I literally started wiping down cleaning windows at the end of the line. That is what everybody come in, right? That's just the beginning part. So I came in here with no intentions of staying here. I said, I need to pay some bills, so I'm going to stay here until I confine myself back into the financial services business.
[00:01:45] Speaker D: Right.
[00:01:46] Speaker C: A year later, I found myself in a situation that needed somebody in the service department in the office. I had my business in my financial services business for ten years prior to that, so I knew how to kind of run an office and different things like that. So I'm a little sweat challenged. And in Fresno, if you're not familiar, it gets to about 110. In the summer. It gets pretty hot. And if you're inside a warehouse production line, it gets even hotter.
[00:02:08] Speaker D: Right?
[00:02:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:09] Speaker C: So I was not too comfortable out there.
[00:02:12] Speaker D: Right.
[00:02:12] Speaker C: And someone said, I got an office position. Are you interested? Sign me up. I don't know what it is, but sign me up.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Air conditioning.
[00:02:19] Speaker C: Yeah. It's got air conditioning. I'm in. So I went in there and started working in the service department again, no intention of staying with the company. I was still a tamp.
[00:02:26] Speaker D: Right.
[00:02:26] Speaker C: And then there were some opportunities. It was a department that kind of was kind of left kind of in the dark. It wasn't advanced, there was no technology. And so I came in there and just my natural instincts of, let's try to fix some of this stuff.
[00:02:39] Speaker D: Right?
[00:02:39] Speaker C: I did that, and I guess got the attention of my supervisor, and maybe fast forward about seven months later, he goes, hey, I'm going to get promoted. I need to find a replacement. Is this something you might be interested in staying at Allen and be the manager of the service department? And at that time, financial services wasn't still. I was still knocking. No one was opening the door. It was kind of tough. So then I said, all right, if I'm gonna stay here, I'm gonna make it worth my time. Let's do this. And my priority was, let's make this the best department in the whole company.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:03:07] Speaker C: And that's what we did. We went in there in 2014, got promoted. We made some changes, processes. We put procedures in place. We established a scheduling system for how we schedule appointments for services that we didn't have before. Now, I didn't do all that, but I kinda get that started, right? And we created a department within three or four years that was the envy of the industry, because we're a five star Yelp company that nobody else has in the industry. So we're proud of that, and we carry that badge with honor. Right? So that's what we did. We said, we're going to make this the best. When people hear about Anlin, when our service techs go out there and service a job, that they're the face of Anlin when they walk in there, and whether they have a bad situation to begin with before we get there, by the time we're done, they're going to be pretty happy. Like they say, the proof is in the pudding. I mean, you can see our Yelp reviews. We're a five star manufacturer, and our service techs and all our team has bought in. And it's customer service, especially in a time right now where customer service is not. You can go to a bunch of companies and you call your phone company or cable company, and they want to fight with you. They're not going to give you anything, right? And they go to Allen, and we actually want to help them. They're kind of blown away. Like oh, okay. And we do. And we take care of our customers. Fast forward three years down the line, that same manager got promoted to director. I'm sorry. He was director at that time, and he says, I got a position open for you. Would you want to take my. And that's when I got promoted about two years ago to director of both services, because it was service at that time. Now I'm part of the supervisor or the director for Inside sales, which is our sales team, too, as well.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:04:40] Speaker C: So I manage both of those departments. We have a great team, and it's 100% customer service is our priority. We take care of our customers, whether it's our dealers that sell our product or our customers, our end users.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: Homeowners.
[00:04:51] Speaker C: Yeah, homeowners. And by the way, I have a degree in electronics, and I did good use with that. No, I don't. You tell me right now I don't even know how to take out an electrical cord somewhere. But, yeah, obviously it wasn't the path that I took, but I'm excited. This is an awesome company. The people here, the environment, the culture is incredible here. And we got great people.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: Yeah, we got in Monday and then have been here all day yesterday and all day today, and it's evident that the culture is amazing. And we knew that coming out we'd gotten, you know, hey, the folks at Anlin are really great. And we're like, okay, let me see it for myself. Yeah, okay, well, maybe are all of them great? And so far that's holding true. In fact, we met you this morning.
[00:05:31] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: Because the front door doesn't open until 08:00 and we were trying to get in here a little early. So we were at the side door, and you were just like this knight in shining armor. You saw us standing out there and you opened the door and it's like, come on in.
[00:05:45] Speaker C: And, yeah, I noticed you guys, and I kind of was looking to see if maybe you guys had some money that you guys. So I can kind of get some money out of you guys, like $20 to get in the door. But you look like nice people that are not going to do anything, no harm to us. I said, yeah, come on in. Don't worry about it.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:06:00] Speaker C: Yeah. So I met you this morning. That's right.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I think Jim has 20. I think Jim can probably hook you up with your.
[00:06:06] Speaker C: If you can. Yeah, that'd be kind of cool. On your way out, please, if you don't mind.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:06:10] Speaker C: California doesn't pay like other places, so, yeah, we need some more money.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: That's awesome. And so I don't know if you knew about this ahead of time, and if you have an answer, great. And if you don't, that's okay, too. We'll cut it. One of the things I love to ask successful people about is the advice that they've received. And so can you share a piece of advice that maybe has stuck out for you?
[00:06:30] Speaker C: Yeah. One of the things that my philosophy is servant leadership. People will follow you if you're a servant leader. Right. Managers are dime a dozen, and they need to follow you because their job's on the line.
[00:06:43] Speaker D: Right.
[00:06:44] Speaker C: Because they need to follow a manager. But people follow leaders because they want to. And I kind of focus my career on making sure people know that I care. And you take care of your people.
[00:06:55] Speaker D: Right.
[00:06:55] Speaker C: You take care of your people. In turn, they'll take care of you. So I got advice from that back when I was in financial services. That was one of the things that I learned is be a servant leader. Take care of your people, and they'll take care of you. I mean, I would say that if somebody wants to be a leader, take care of your people, do the right thing. Kind of imagine that they have a sign in their chest that says, make me feel special. And if you think like that all the time, you're not going to always do that.
[00:07:17] Speaker D: Right?
[00:07:17] Speaker C: Because we're all human.
[00:07:18] Speaker D: Right.
[00:07:18] Speaker C: But if you have that philosophy, things will work out and people will follow you.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: I like that.
[00:07:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: So with what we are doing as a team, as a university, is providing product training and industry training for the dealer base and for their employees. And it's available 20 online. It's free. They can log in. How do you see a tool like that benefiting the people of Amlon?
[00:07:41] Speaker C: I think that's incredible. I mean, that's something that we probably have talked about for a while already, especially in the service side of it. There's a lot of homeowners call, and there might be little things that they can probably work on that maybe they don't need a call to get a service done. And we talked about doing videos for them and how to things. So that's been in our mind, and we just haven't got, obviously got around to it. But this, I think especially in the platform that you have, and anybody can download it.
[00:08:07] Speaker D: Right.
[00:08:07] Speaker C: It's incredible for our dealers now. They can train their people. We get calls all the time from dealers saying, hey, do you have a service tech of yours or your tech supervisor that can come out here and train us and do those things, we would try to help them as much as we can, but because of our bandwidth, we're not available all the time. This would be perfect. I think this is an awesome tool that we have at our disposal right now. So it's awesome. I think it's great.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: Well, we're excited and their success is our success.
[00:08:31] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: And knowledge is power and all of those little things that we can toss out. But I know that it's been very valuable to the other brands that we've been able to help in that regard. The PGT brands, CGI, Windoor, Echo, Easy Breeze, Western. So next year we'll get to Martin, so just as we're able to, you know, develop those courses and get acquainted with the products. But everything here has been amazing. The crew's been amazing. Yeah, the tour yesterday was great with Brennan and it's just been a really fun trip.
[00:09:00] Speaker C: So, yeah, we're a small company that probably no one's heard of us, you know, till now.
[00:09:04] Speaker D: Right.
[00:09:04] Speaker C: We're part of PGTI, but we've been here all this time and it's kind of one of those things. Nice to know that now we can get the exposure and you can see how great the company is, the products that we produce and probably more importantly, what awesome team we have here.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:19] Speaker C: And they want to help people out and they want to do the best. So this is great. I really appreciate what you guys are doing.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: Yeah, well, we appreciate being here. Thank you so much for your time today, Sergio.
[00:09:27] Speaker C: Well, thank you guys and thank you guys for being here and hopefully bump into each other again. Yeah.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: All right, take care. Bye.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: PGTI University is the customer education team for an entire family of brands. We began with the original easy breeze porch enclosure line, then became PGT, America's leading brand of impact resistant windows and doors. We then added CGI, CGIC, Windoor western window systems, new south windows, Echo windows and doors, and len windows and doors. And our latest acquisition, Martin garage doors. We create products built to withstand major storms, keeping people safe, secure and prepared. Our exceptional brands give you the protection you need without compromising design or functionality. PGTI University is here to educate you, our listener, so that you can be a more informed consumer of window and door products.
